‘Abortion Rights—Murder’ by Edward C. Hayes

Ms. Sally loved the parties, spent her nights out “on the town.”
Her door was open for the boys, whenever they came ‘round.
Then one morning when she woke she knew that things weren’t right,
She punched up numbers on her phone, and called “Abortion Rights.”

They sympathized and named a friendly obstetrician man.
He met her with a smile, and hypodermic in his hand.
She felt a shock , the womb convulse, and then a searing pain.
The child was born, and gave a cry—and never cried again.

Every doctor takes an oath to do the very best he can
To do no harm,* and most stay true, in this once Godly land,
But some inject a mother so the child within her womb
Is born, a lifeless corpse, and stacked like garbage in the room.

There are some that some call “doctor,” and some gov’ners in our land
That hide the truth in silken words, so we won’t understand.
They say, “comfort the new-born” —what a mockery of words!
They mean, “A pillow on its face, the choking won’t be heard.”

A university faculty (PhD University of California 1967, political science) and freelancer in his early career, Ted Hayes moved into full-time journalism and is now retired.

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10 Responses

I’ve never seen the film, but don’t think I need to after reading this poem. Very well done, very moving and really quite shocking, as it should be. Rights appear to trump obligations and duties every time don’t they? And expediency so often trumps the rights of the unborn. And those euphemisms! If the mother dies in the process is this “collateral damage”?

David, don’t confuse the idea of rights as compared to powers. We, as American citizens have rights, enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but the government has Powers, as described in other articles of The Constitution. These are two different things, which mainly involve the relationships of superordinate an subordinate entities. And of course nobody has the right to abort you (and it’s far too late for that, anyway), but at some point someone may or may not have the right to an abortion. In my opinion, every person should have the right to make personal decisions, and I can only hope that those decisions are moral ones, according to that person’s sense of morality. I don’t expect anyone to make the same decisions I would have made, but it is important that persons make moral decisions, for better or worse. God knows, people need practice in such activities. And God will separate the righteous and the iniquitous in His own time.

C.B., I completely agree with you. I am against abortion on moral grounds, which means I am “pro-life.” But I am also “pro-choice,” in that it is a woman’s final decision that counts, and the government should stay out of it. I also reluctantly agree that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

Mr. Anderson,
I understand your viewpoint. When you say that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, as long as they are moral decisions, it seems to me you are ducking the question. Is “unlimited abortion” a moral decision? Late term, healthy foetus, mother not endangered? Post-birth? – Ted Hayes

I gagged as I read the poem. The clinical starkness was effective. As I re-read it, I felt increasingly uncomfortable about its message until I recalled Marshall McLuhan and I began to see the poem more as the vehicle for a point of view than a ‘cri de coeur’.
Somehow that made me angry. But I haven’t seen the movie so I hope that this poem is mostly a reflection of having seen it. Because the subject of abortion merits much more philosophical and ethical discussion than the piece suggests. The response made by CB is a far more elegant argument than I could mount and I agree with him absolutely.

Jan, as always, you are a darling. And if what I just wrote makes me more a libertarian than a conservative, then I can live with that. Yes, the poem itself has more outrage than rhetorical skill, and doesn’t account for lives ruined from the outset by irresponsible parents. And “murder,” by the way, is a legal term. It does not denote or connote the same thing as “killing.” Every day untold thousands of bacteria are killed inside our guts, but no one, except perhaps for extreme vegans, would ever call that murder. I don’t mean to minimize the horror of what is now legal in certain U.S. states, but let us please not conflate “early-term” with “late-term.”